Introduction: Looking back at the 2021 auto market, what else can you think of? Lack of chips, lack of batteries, or a chicken feather user operation? Is it Tesla's ride, or Wei Xiaoli's infinite scenery? Is Toyota finally electrifying, or is Volkswagen's transformation pain? The front wave, born to death; the back wave, complacent; the barbarian, the tiger. There is Huawei, which is star-studded, and of course, there is also the loneliness of Evergrande Automobile. And so on, all of which are wonderful.
2021 is a year full of surprises, when we think that the epidemic is about to pass, Delta and Omikerong mutant strains have appeared one after another, the epidemic continues to repeat, and prevention and control has entered normalization. And when everyone thinks that the automotive industry has gradually come out of the haze of the epidemic and begun to look forward to a new round of growth, the chip shortage has given the global car companies a second critical blow.
Lack of core is an established fact, why the lack of core is not so important, how to deal with the problem of major car companies is the focus of attention. Some car companies want to grasp the initiative and open the road of self-research; some car companies see the opportunity to empty the inventory in one fell swoop; some car companies are surviving and have a chance to breathe in the context of industry tension; some car companies regard the crisis as an excuse and regard the lack of core as a shield for poor performance. The global car market under the background of lack of cores is like a coin that has been tossed up, some people choose numbers, some people choose to print, before the coin lands, which family is happy and which is sad is not yet known.
In the current situation that there is no product in the market, it is imperative to find the "sense of security" of automobile manufacturing. 2022 has arrived, in the past year, the automotive industry has launched a "nano-level" offensive and defensive war focusing on chips, what layouts have major car companies done, what have they gained, and what have they lost?
Helpless to stop production or take advantage of the "desert" to hit iron
Chip famine at the end of 2020 has begun to emerge, the first impact is the consumer electronics products field, at this time the automotive industry has not yet recognized the seriousness of the problem. In fact, because of the reliability, safety and other factors, the production and inspection of vehicle-grade chips is much more complicated than that of consumer electronics product chips, and once the production is stopped, it is quite difficult to restore production capacity.
After entering 2021, repeated COVID-19 epidemics triggered work stoppages, the February Texas cold wave forced the world's two largest automotive chipmakers Infineon and NXP to close their factories, and the fire in Japan's Renesas Electronics production area in March further aggravated the obstacle to chip production. At this point, the demand of the automotive industry and the chip production cycle have mismatched, and the chip shortage has gradually spread to the car specification chip.
The binding between car companies and chip manufacturers is far deeper than we think. Automobile companies generally develop production plans on a yearly basis, and the specific details are updated quarterly and monthly to determine the number of parts needed over a period of time. A large supply chain system requires precise and meticulous forecasting, supply, logistics and other management processes to ensure that the entire chain runs smoothly and efficiently.
In the face of the problem of insufficient chip production capacity, it is impossible to replace suppliers in a short period of time, not to mention that the epidemic has caused an impact on the global industry, and it is impossible to change it. In such a severe situation, most car companies have no choice but to stop production. SAIC Volkswagen, Fiat Chrysler, Nissan, Daimler, Subaru, General Motors, Ford Motor, Nio and other car companies have reduced production or stopped production.
Of course, there are also car companies that have not been seriously affected in a short period of time because they have hoarded chips in advance, such as Toyota Motor. Ten years ago, the crisis of the Japanese earthquake chip supply for more than half a year made Toyota attach great importance to the reserve of parts and components, and formulated a business continuity plan (BCP), which requires suppliers to reserve chips for Toyota for two to six months, so the entire 2021, although more or less affected by the chip shortage, still achieved positive sales growth.
Insufficient production capacity, car companies stop production, bringing consumers such as the infinite lengthening of the car cycle and the increase in the cost of car purchase, and even some car companies take the opportunity to significantly increase the price of terminal cars, and make a "core is difficult to make money". Such an operation may have objective benefits in a short period of time, but what is invisibly damaged is the consumer's recognition and trust in the brand.
Some car companies have increased prices, and some car companies have taken advantage of the "waste" to hit iron, such as SAIC Volkswagen, although in the early days of the chip famine, there was a factory shutdown, but SAIC Volkswagen did not follow the trend of price increases, still maintained the original marketing strategy and marketing model, in 2021 successfully cleared the warehouse, the first 11 months of cumulative sales of more than 1.21 million units. The demand for pure electric models for vehicle specification chips is higher than that of traditional fuel models, and it is very good to be able to deliver on schedule, and the sales volume of Volkswagen's pure electric ID series models has also increased steadily, with deliveries reaching 13,787 units in December, with a cumulative sales volume of 70,625 vehicles throughout the year, and the performance in the domestic market is becoming more and more excellent.
Car companies have both joys and worries, but the impact of the chip shortage on the global automotive industry is real. According to the latest data from AutoForecast Solutions, a global automotive consulting organization, as of December 19, 2021, the global automotive market has reduced production by 10.272 million vehicles due to lack of cores. Among them, China's auto market has reduced production by 1.982 million units. Regardless of whether the car companies in 2021 are growing, profitable or loss-making, from the perspective of the industry, 2021 is a year of huge losses.
Layout in advance, not to be "stuck neck"
Chip shortage and suspension of production to some companies that have poor performance to provide a "shield", in the context of the automotive industry is fully blocked, poor sales, serious losses and other problems have a good excuse. But whether it is the epidemic or the chip shortage, there will be a day in the past, and the fig leaf of the development of the enterprise will always be unveiled. As long as the core technology is not mastered in their own hands, they will be "stuck in the neck" by others again.
A few years ago, in order to crack down on the rapid rise of Chinese high-tech enterprises led by Huawei, the US government did not hesitate to fabricate charges to impose sanctions, which undoubtedly sounded the alarm for many Chinese enterprises.
To quote Wu Zhixin, deputy general manager of China Automobile Research Institute, he said: "Automobile companies should firmly grasp the initiative of industrial development in their own hands, penetrate the links of research and development, production, circulation and consumption, break through the breakpoints and blockages of the industrial chain, and ensure the safety and stability of the industrial chain supply chain, so as to gain the right to speak in the global automobile industry division of labor system." If you want not to be "stuck in the neck", if you want rapid and steady development and breakthrough, you must lay out in advance, find the sense of security of automobile manufacturing, and achieve curve overtaking in the context of lack of cores.
To say that in the chip industry in advance layout, BYD is absolutely autonomous first. Since the establishment of BYD Microelectronics in 2004, WHICH has owned the first automotive IGBT production chain in China, including IGBT chip design, wafer manufacturing, module packaging and other parts, as well as simulation testing and vehicle testing.
BYD's self-made 1.0-generation IGBT chip was introduced as early as 2010. In 2015, BYD's models began to use its self-developed IGBT2.5 chip; in 2020, BYD became the first car company in China to mass-produce self-developed silicon carbide chips on a large scale. Naturally, the chip famine in 2021 has not caused much impact on BYD, ANDI officially said that IGBT chips have been used in various product lines, and in addition to brand self-use, chips have been exported to provide support to other car companies.
It is the self-development of chips and other components that makes BYD's annual sales exceed 730,000 units in 2021, an increase of 75.4% year-on-year, of which the annual sales of new energy passenger cars reached 593745 units, an increase of 231.6% year-on-year. From BYD, we can see the great significance of mastering core technologies.
In addition to BYD, other independent car companies have also opened the road of chip self-research.
As early as February this year, Great Wall Motors completed its strategic investment in the automotive intelligent chip company - Horizon, and jointly developed its own chips. On the penultimate day of 2021, Great Wall Motors signed a strategic investment agreement with Tongguang To officially enter the third-generation semiconductor industry and promote the industrialization of silicon carbide semiconductor materials and chips. According to the planning of Great Wall Motor's "2025 Strategy", in the next five years, the cumulative R&D investment will reach 100 billion yuan, and the key core technology areas of the third-generation semiconductor such as large computing chips and silicon carbide are one of the key development directions.
Geely also began to expand into the chip field. Geely Automobile's Weirui Electric Vehicle, Core Juneng Semiconductor and Core Technology investment joint venture established Guangdong Core Yueneng Semiconductor Co., Ltd., which mainly lays out vehicle-grade power semiconductor products and forms a linkage with the core june semiconductor industry chain.
At the same time, Geely also through its own holding of Zhejiang Yijiatong Technology Co., Ltd., indirectly invested in Hubei Xinqing Technology Co., Ltd., Geely officials said that in 2022 will be mass production by the company's self-developed smart cockpit chip SE1000, the chip adopts a 7nm process, multi-core heterogeneous, with 8.8 billion transistors. In 2024-2025, Geely will launch an on-board integrated supercomputing platform chip based on the 5nm process, as well as a high-computing power autonomous driving chip, and the computing power will reach 256TOPS to meet the needs of L3 intelligent driving.
Unlike Great Wall and Geely, which invest in technology companies to develop vehicle-grade chips, Changan Automobile has chosen to cooperate with the industry's leading technology companies. Changan Automobile, Huawei, and CATL jointly established Avita Technology Co., Ltd., in which Huawei will jointly build Avita Technology through its ICT technology and Avita Technology to provide full-stack intelligent vehicle solutions, including self-developed chips and radars, through its ICT technology and Avita Technology. At present, a new generation of intelligent electric vehicle technology platform CHN has been born, and the first model Avita 11 has been officially unveiled.
Of course, the new forces of car manufacturing will not be left behind, Wei Xiaoli has built an autonomous driving team and started the self-research process of automatic driving chips. Zero-run Automobile has released lingxin 01, an AI intelligent driving chip with independent intellectual property rights, and the first model equipped with this chip, zero-run C11, has been delivered in October 2021.
Many independent brands invariably exert their strength in the field of chips, breaking through technical barriers is just around the corner, and it is getting closer and closer to the curve overtaking of China's automotive industry.
Kanche said
If you use the harmonic stem of the chip to summarize the global car market in 2021, the idiom of "core" is the most appropriate. The globalized industrial chain has brought great benefits to the automotive industry, but in turn, once a problem occurs in one link in the chain, the entire industry can only be forced to stagnate. Core technology has always been the key to grasping the initiative, in the past, this key is three major pieces, and after 2021, whether you admit it or not, the chip is already the key in the key.
The epidemic that began in 2020 is an unprecedented blow to the global automotive industry. But it is gratifying that in the case of the rapid control of the domestic epidemic, the two years of independent brands have been rapid development, whether it is the emergence of new brands, the launch of new models, the mastery of new technologies and now the layout of self-developed chips, independent brands have come out of their own rhythm, especially in 2021, the chip shortage has provided independent brands with a time window to enhance international competitiveness, and Chinese car companies have gradually moved to the forefront of the automotive industry. 2022 has arrived, and this chip "coin" that has been tossed up will surely land in recent years, and the global automotive pattern changes that will eventually be brought about are worth our expectations.